Page 47

—

There were four DCI bodyguards outside the Duchess Suite. One of them opened the door, and Cronley and Serov walked into the suite.

“Shit,” Cronley muttered when he saw that Father McGrath, Tiny Dunwiddie, and Ginger were in the room.

“And hello to you, too,” Ginger said.

“I’m sorry, but I have to have a private word with Colonel Serov,” Cronley said. “We’ll be right back.”

“Actually, James,” Serov said, “I’d hoped to have a word with Father McGrath. In fact, with everybody. I’ve been thinking—”

The door opened again, and Colonel Mortimer Cohen entered the suite.

When he saw Serov, Cohen said, “I wonder why the phrase ‘fox in the henhouse’ suddenly popped into my head.”

“Ivan’s been thinking, Colonel,” Cronley said. “And you’re just in time to hear what.”

Cohen motioned toward the Haig & Haig. “While I am a devout believer in beware of Russians bearing gifts, if I were offered a taste from that bottle the colonel is holding in a death grip, I might be inclined to listen to what he wants to say.”

“How kind of you. James, why don’t you find a glass for the colonel?”

* * *

—

“I’ve been thinking . . .” Serov began when Cronley finished serving the drinks.

“So you keep telling us,” Cronley said.

“I was about to go to Budapest . . .”

“Why?” Cohen asked.

“I came into reliable information that Gábor Péter had von Dietelburg and Burgdorf.”

“So it was the AVO who handled their escape?” Cohen asked.

“That would be a reasonable conclusion to draw.”

Cronley thought, As if you didn’t know.

“I didn’t think I could get Gábor to hand them over to me, but I thought their changed circumstances—and Gábor’s interrogation techniques—might get them to tell me who has Odessa’s money. If we can get our hands on that, it would put Odessa out of business.”

Both Cohen and Cronley nodded in agreement.

“And it might cut Himmler’s new religion off at the knees,” Serov went on, “which I now regard as God’s mission for me in this life.”

That sounds like pure bullshit.

But why do I believe him?

“I went from that,” Serov said, “to thinking that Burgdorf and von Dietelburg were not going to tell me or Gábor anything. I think they realize that sooner or later—most likely, rather soon—we’re going to kill them and that they would rather die, and be remembered, as martyrs to the cause of the Thousand-Year Reich and the heretical religion of Saint Heinrich the Divine.

“And then I had an epiphany. I began to think of the money itself, which I had never done before. I realized that it was millions, perhaps even tens of millions, of dollars, pounds, Swiss francs, plus gold and precious stones.

“It would not fit in fifty trunks. It is not readily transportable, and I don’t think it’s buried in the basement of some ruin in Berlin or Vienna, or elsewhere.”

He paused, then finished. “So where is it stored?”